haiku 20 Dec 2017

From a distant star
A fast scout arriving first
Ice and hard-baked gunk

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ] ​

on changing flora

The bottle of probiotic powder cost a hundred bones. I bought it instead of going to see the play Noah, during my family's reunion. Fuck going to the play Noah; if I had wanted to read the story of Noah, I'd have bought a bible from the dollar store, for a dollar. Since receiving the powder I have added 1/32 of a teaspoon of it to my morning protein shake, one made with organic whey powder, natural peanut butter, chia seeds, cinnamon, honey, and almond milk. And boy do my guts like their new inhabitants, the good little microbes expanding throughout my intestines, the millions of microscopic remora cleaning and grooming me, their sentient and bipedal man-shark. After little more than a week, the probiotics have helped make my mind less cluttered, my yearnings fewer, my needs less pressing, and my Spirit lighter. The gut is indeed a powerful force, the third mind of man.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

lazy organic gardening

(Most of the knowledge passed on in this article comes from a few dozen Organic Gardening magazines I found in a dust-and-cobweb-covered stack in the barn. While printed in the late 1970s and early '80s, they contain timeless wisdom and much good advice.)

Throughout the spring and summer of 2012, this author has been conducting an experiment in lazy organic gardening (LOG). Among the benefits of LOG are a decreased workload, a drastic reduction in gardening-related stress, and three gardening plots nearly indistinguishable from their neighbors, wildflower-filled fallow fields. The inspiration for this method came in part from the Tao Teh Ching, specifically verse 7, in which Lao Tzu (via Jonathan Star, who provides the best translation of the text I have yet found) asks what an individual could do that the universe has not already accomplished for him, or her. Liking the sound of this notion and attempting to put it into practice, I started by digging out the plots to sixteen inches before setting in a three-inch-thick layer of composted leaves and grass, to which I added generous handfuls of bio-charred bamboo (wood-charcoal works just as well) before piling the dug-out soil back on. When planting, I applied thick layers of mulch around each newly-transplanted seedling (mulch was mostly cut grass with some leaves and twigs mixed in). (Next year, I shall raise my seedlings in a cold frame in hopes of a greater success rate, which this year was a dismal 15%). Then, I stepped away and waited, watering the plots (partly via small-scale drip irrigation) only when the first six inches of soil dried out.

Among the benefits of thick and early mulching include almost no weed growth and preservation of the soil's inherent, natural moisture balance. Bio-charring contributed to the vigorous and healthy growth of those few plants that survived my poor seedling-raising protocols, among them crook-neck squash, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, string beans, and green peppers. Pollination occurred quickly at both plot sites (two near the house, the other across the stream), given their proximity to large growths of jewel-weed, native and healing grasses (plantago lanceolata, p. major, taraxacum offinale, oxalis acetosella), and patches of wild blackberries that attract legions of industrious honey-bees which have made this little valley their home. At no point in the plants' life-cycles did this whorphan pull weeds, pick bugs, or apply chemical agents; the plants were left at the mercy of Mother Nature, who was fair in her attentions, sending pest-eating paper wasps to patrol the crops but also blighting a number of plantings, among them the cabbage and broccoli, which were completely destroyed. (This was an attempt to put the Taoist verse referenced above into practice by allowing the universe to grow the plants and to keep them healthy.)

For next year's growing seasons, I plan to take things further by trying a no-till method in which seedlings are transplanted directly into small, watered, composted holes in the lawn itself. Furthermore, I shall plant directly into the plot I made by dropping a four-layer-thick pad of cardboard (pizza boxes) onto the lawn and covering it with twelve inches of grass and leaves. (The original foot of material has composted itself down to just few inches, which I have covered with another foot of the same.) I aim to find (and perpetuate) varieties that grow well both in this clay-filled soil and in the local atmospheric variances, which include high summer heat, soggy springs and falls, and windy, cold winters. The ultimate coup for this lazy organic gardener would be to make tame crop species wild again so that they would offer their bounty to anyone passing by, blessing the bodies of persons-in-the-know with organic roughage and healthful trace minerals and strengthening the immune systems of persons brave enough to eat unwashed produce straight from the ground. Such is the life of the organic whorphan, he who would rather watch his plants get eaten alive than break out noxious chemicals; but to pump complex compounds into the soil and the air would be to try to do for myself what the universe has already accomplished, which, for now, is an abundance of fresh, organic vegetables. Huzzah, and, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on hoarding

For many years – nay, for the entire time I knew him – I considered my father to be a hoarder of goods, not necessarily clinically-obsessive, but more along the lines of a pack-rat. Born in New York City in 1934, his childhood was likely shaped by the shortages and scarcity that so greatly plagued America while she was fighting the German and Japanese Empires; he learned from an early age the need to pick up and store all items of even the slightest utilitarian or financial value, that eleven dimes had to be squeezed out of every dollar, and that such things as could be, would be reused, reworked, and recycled.

And so it was throughout my childhood that I grew up in a household in which broken things were often jury-rigged until they once again worked, in which random nuts and loose bolts were stored in plastic containers just in case they might be needed someday, in which all options were exhausted before one fired up the car and drove to the hardware store. And, so, I am not surprised when I catch myself retrieving stray things-of-worth from busy roadways, waiting for traffic to subside before dashing out to retrieve a somewhat rusty pair of wire-snips or a ½-inch metal hose clamp, items that I refurbish, reuse, or store away.

Until recently, I did not however act in this fashion, preferring the now-standard path that many Americans seem to take of throwing out most everything – even items in perfectly good working condition – certain that, tomorrow, when they actually do need them, they will have enough money to buy brand-new, Chinese-made replacement items (which, especially with specialty items, may be available only when the shop opens in the morning). Until my eyes were re-opened recently to the enormous value of such things as with which my deceased father filled this dacha's basement and out-buildings, I too thought of those things as trash, as superfluous goods, as six decades worth of proof that hoarding was a bad thing. Now, however, after mowing this property's acres with a muscle-powered, cast-iron push-mower, and after spending the last eight months moving my body through space-time on a bicycle (and, incidentally, after hewing more closely to the teachings of Lao Tzu), I find that my estimation of what I once thought of as clutter has changed dramatically.

For example, the pile of old magazines that has sat on a shelf in the barn for the last twenty years turned out to be a few dozen, successive copies of Organic Gardening magazine; since starting to read them, my appreciation for and knowledge of Nature-friendly, low-impact methods for growing edible and pretty things has grown substantially, much as have the crops in my gardens. Also, the various medium-scale farming and landscaping devices that have been hanging around collecting dust all these years turned out to be exactly the types of things one would need to turn this property's best south-facing slope into a productive field, whereupon might grow fuel to run engines, fibers to clothe bodies, and food to fill stomachs. Furthermore, the bamboo that has grown here in abundance after my dad shoved a single shoot of it into the ground in the late 1970s is a plant whose utility knows few bounds; add to these blessings the many fruit and firewood trees that have been allowed to grow as tall as they wanted to grow, and this oddly-shaped little chunk of land fast resembles a perfect place for self-sufficient living. Perfect, that is, for an able-bodied yet otherwise worthless individual looking to make use of piles of heaped-up clutter, such as myself. So, if there is any moral lesson to this article, it is that viewing things from within different frames of mind can often reveal their hidden, secret worth. So open those peepers, elasticize the mind, and keep that head on a swivel. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on gardening as a slacker

Every morning, at 0530A, an alarm sounds, triggering my body into wakefulness. Being a spoiled, snot-nosed American brat and a generally worthless individual, and seeing as how I endeavor to shrink my bad and to grow my good characteristics, I have taken on the awesome responsibility of gardening. That row cover of tulle draped tightly over spans of freshly-split bamboo? Installed yesterday. That Third-World-style drip irrigation unit my missionary uncle sent me via insured mail five weeks ago? Installed last weekend. Yes, though I sometimes take a bit longer to get things done than I might ought to, I am learning a lot from the three separate gardens growing on this dacha's property, among them one that was donated, one that I am growing for a silent partner, and one that I grew from seed. Add to these two fledgling blueberry bushes (which are stuck in a sort of limbo) and one string-bean plant peeking from beneath an upside-down planter hanging on the back patio, and the opportunities for work become endless.

Every morning, as rosy-fingered Dawn is caressing the world with the promise of day but before the chariot of the sun-god has crested the horizon, I haul water up from the stream to moisten the earth within the various plots. And again in the evening, when Helios begins to dip toward the horizon and the birds start flocking home to roost, the soil drinks deeply of the cool running brook. To my great fortune, a good friend gave me a stack of Mother Earth News magazines, and, while foxing around in the barn, I found a trove of Organic Gardening magazines from the 1970s and '80s that I have been reading and studying, and from which I have gleaned much valuable knowledge. What, you ask, is the most useful bit of advice I have come across? Beyond the row-covers of tulle and the genius of drip irrigation, the most useful advice has been to never leave ground uncovered, i.e. that one should always cover one's soil with at least some form of mulch (grass clippings, leaves, layers of cardboard) so that it does not bake too badly in the sun and so that it is always gaining some sort of nutrients as things above it decompose.

I think back often to the lessons my parents once taught me, long ago, before they died, and I am tempted to chide myself for not remembering them, for not having paid better attention to what they said, and for not heeding their advice, but, instead, I bask happily in the memories and try to learn as much as I can from the soil sitting in my hands, from the plants growing in the ground, from the wind, from the rain, and from the subtle interplay that occurs when all of these elements conspire together, somehow, to make life. Among the most enduring lessons I am learning is this: no matter how barren soil may seem, it has the seemingly endless capacity to bounce back. This is but my first time doing this sort of work, but, by Liberty, I like it.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit